What America Promised Ukraine in 1994 and What It Did Not

You will hear a sentence on cable news at least once a week: "America guaranteed Ukraine's security in 1994." It comes out smoothly, with total confidence, from people who have never read the document. It is also wrong, and the way it is wrong tells you a lot about how Washington makes promises and how Washington forgets them.

The document is the Budapest Memorandum. It is short enough to read over a cup of coffee, and the actual words matter more than anyone's summary of them, including mine. What it contains is a set of assurances. What it does not contain is a guarantee, a mutual-defence clause or anything that sends American troops anywhere. Those are different things, and a country that confuses them can get into a lot of trouble: one by overpromising, the other by being surprised.

I'm going to take you through the history in order, read you the commitments as they were written, and then ask the two questions that matter. What did we owe Ukraine? And what should a careful country learn about making arms-control bargains?

The inheritance

When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, it left behind a map full of new countries and a very large problem. Nuclear weapons sat on the territory of four of them: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Ukraine held one of the largest arsenals in the world, inherited from the Soviet military. The weapons were on Ukrainian soil, but the launch codes were controlled in Moscow, which is an important detail and one people leave out when they say Ukraine "gave up" its deterrent.

The prospect of four new nuclear states, one of them unstable and cash-poor, kept American officials awake. Washington had a straightforward goal: consolidate the weapons in Russia and keep the number of nuclear powers at the number it already was. There were two instruments. One was diplomacy. The other was money, in the form of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, usually called Nunn-Lugar after Senator Sam Nunn, a Democrat, and Senator Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican. Lugar's name stayed attached to the program for decades. It helped pay for dismantling the delivery systems and securing weapons across the former Soviet states.

The Lisbon Protocol, 1992

In May 1992 the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed the Lisbon Protocol to the START I arms-reduction treaty. The three non-Russian states agreed to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as non-nuclear-weapon states "in the shortest possible time." That was the legal promise on the disarmament side. It did not settle what Ukraine would get in return, and Ukraine's parliament dragged its feet. Kyiv wanted compensation and security. That is a sensible thing to want.

The trilateral statement, January 1994

The hinge came on January 14, 1994, in Moscow. President Bill Clinton, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk signed a Trilateral Statement. Under it, Ukraine would transfer its nuclear warheads to Russia to be dismantled, and in return Ukraine would receive fuel for its civilian reactors as compensation. The statement also recorded security assurances. Ukraine's parliament then voted in November 1994 to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

December 5, 1994: Budapest

The final step took place at a summit of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, now the OSCE, held in Budapest. On December 5, 1994 Ukraine formally joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state. That same day the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and Ukraine signed the Memorandum on Security Assurances in connection with Ukraine's accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Budapest Memorandum. Presidents Clinton, Yeltsin and Kuchma, and Prime Minister John Major signed. France and China made separate statements of similar assurances.

Now read what the signers actually committed to. In substance, there were six points.

1. To respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine and its existing borders.
2. To refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine's territorial integrity or political independence, and never to use weapons against Ukraine except in self-defence or as the United Nations Charter allows.
3. To refrain from economic coercion aimed at subordinating Ukraine's rights to their own interests.
4. To seek immediate action by the UN Security Council to give assistance to Ukraine if Ukraine became a victim of aggression, or a target of a threat of aggression, in which nuclear weapons were used.
5. Not to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, as a non-nuclear state in the treaty.
6. To consult if questions arose about these commitments.

Read that list again, slowly, and look for the word "guarantee." You will not find it. Look for any promise to defend Ukraine with military force. You will not find that either. The nearest thing is the fourth point, a promise to go to the UN Security Council, where Russia, as one of the permanent members with a veto, can block anything. The memorandum is a set of political commitments about respecting borders and not using force, plus a consultation clause.

Where the memorandum fits in the nuclear bargain

To see why the language was so careful, you need the system it plugged into. The Non-Proliferation Treaty, which entered into force in 1970, divides the world into two classes. The "nuclear-weapon states," defined as those that had built and tested a device before January 1, 1967, are the United States, the Soviet Union (now Russia), Britain, France and China. Everyone else who joins promises not to build the bomb. In exchange the nuclear powers promise to share peaceful nuclear technology and to pursue disarmament.

Non-nuclear states have long asked for something extra: a pledge that the big powers will not threaten them with nuclear weapons. These pledges are called negative security assurances. The Budapest Memorandum was, in effect, a tailor-made version for Ukraine, with added promises on borders and economic coercion. In April 1995 the UN Security Council passed a resolution taking note of the nuclear powers' individual assurances, which tells you how much of this system runs on statements of intent.

That is the context in which a sentence like "to seek immediate Security Council action" appears. The drafters were not hiding the ball. They were working in a world where assurances are the normal currency, and where nuclear states have been unwilling to turn them into binding mutual-defence pacts. The real defect was not in the drafting. It was in the way officials, and later commentators, talked about the result, as if a wooden spoon were a sword.

Assurance versus guarantee

This distinction is the whole ballgame, so let me make it plain.

A guarantee says: if X happens, we will do Y. NATO's Article 5 is a commitment of that kind. Members agree that an armed attack on one is an attack on all, and that each will take the action it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore security. You can read how that worked in practice in The One Time NATO's Article 5 Was Invoked, and Who Answered the Call.

An assurance says: we will not do X to you, and we recognize your right to Z. It is a statement of intent and of respect. It binds the signers to behave in a certain way. It does not bind third parties to rush to the rescue.

The Budapest Memorandum is of the second kind. In law it is a political commitment, not a treaty. That brings us to a constitutional point that conservatives ought to care about.

Why the Senate was never asked

Article II of the Constitution says the President can make treaties "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur." The Clinton administration did not submit the Budapest Memorandum to the Senate. It treated it as a political arrangement, not a binding treaty, and that is why it contains the careful language of "assurances" and not the language of an alliance.

You might think that is a technicality. It is not. It means that no Senate ever debated, amended or voted on what the United States owed Ukraine. A treaty would have forced the argument into the open: what are we promising, to whom, under what conditions, with what forces? Without that, the public never decided. Nobody could say in 1994 that the American people had signed up to fight for Kyiv, because nobody had asked them. The same constitutional issue lies at the heart of Why Republicans Said the Iran Deal Should Have Been a Treaty, and it is the best case for the principle that big commitments should go through the Senate.

The strongest case that America broke a promise

Here is the opposing view at its strongest, and it is not a foolish one.

The argument runs: Ukraine surrendered a huge arsenal, on the strength of paper from Russia, the United States and Britain. The paper said Ukraine's borders would be respected. When Russia later seized Crimea in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, it trampled the document's first and second commitments. The United States and Britain, as co-signers, had a moral obligation to do more than issue statements. And the lesson other governments draw is simple and ugly: if you give up your weapons, you will be punished for it; if you keep them, you will be left alone.

I take that seriously. The moral force of the point is real, particularly the last part. A country that wants others to give up dangerous weapons has to be seen to keep its word to those who did.

The answer, in four parts

1. The text did not promise defence. Russia violated the memorandum's commitments, that much is clear. The document committed Russia, among others, to respect Ukraine's borders and refrain from force. But the American commitments were to respect, to refrain, to consult and to go to the Security Council. The accurate charge against Moscow is that it broke its word. The charge against Washington is different and narrower.
2. Ukraine could not have kept the weapons in any practical sense. By most accounts the launch control was in Moscow and the warheads needed maintenance Ukraine could not easily supply, and holding them would have brought isolation, sanctions and a standoff with both Russia and the West at a time when Ukraine's economy was in free fall. That is a reasonable assessment, and I'd flag that historians argue about how realistic the alternatives were. But "Ukraine could simply have kept them" is a slogan, not a plan.
3. The deterrence lesson is real, but it is not the only lesson. Other governments are watching, and some will conclude that nuclear weapons are the only insurance. That risk needs to be on the table. But the answer is not to say that giving up weapons is always a mistake. It is to make better bargains.
4. The mistake was one of design and candour. Washington signed a document whose language could be read as more than it was, and then let the public believe it meant more. That is how a promise becomes a grievance.

What a better bargain looks like

If you are going to ask a country to give up the most powerful weapon in the world, here is what honest dealing demands.

• Say exactly what you are promising, in plain words. If it is an assurance, call it one. If you mean a guarantee, write one.
• Put the big promises through the Senate. A treaty ratified by two thirds of the Senate has a legitimacy and a durability that a press-conference commitment does not. It is harder to make, and that is a feature. You cannot honour a promise the country never agreed to.
• Make the benefits tangible and the timeline clear. Compensation, verification and support should be spelled out and funded.
• Match the promise to the capability. A pledge you cannot keep is worse than silence. See Why Deterrence Is a Promise You Have to Be Willing to Keep.
• Be wary of paper from a partner who has the power to ignore it. The memorandum put its weight on a veto-wielding member of the Security Council. Reality and text pointed in different directions.

Our posts on Three Legs, One Purpose, and Why America Keeps a Nuclear Triad and When Sanctions Worked, When They Failed, and Why the Difference Matters discuss related questions of deterrence and economic pressure. And the longer history of how America has handled Moscow is in George Kennan's Long Telegram and the Strategy That Won the Cold War.

The bottom line

• The Budapest Memorandum of December 5, 1994 contains assurances: respect for Ukraine's borders, no use of force or economic coercion, no nuclear threats, a Security Council appeal and a consultation clause. It does not contain a guarantee or a promise of military defence.
• It was never submitted to the Senate. A promise that big deserved a public debate and a two-thirds vote.
• Russia broke its word. That is a plain fact, and it does not become less true because the American text was narrower than people think.
• The right lesson for the next arms bargain is not "never disarm" but "write plain promises, ratify the big ones, and fund what you pledge."
• When you hear that America "guaranteed" something, ask to see the sentence. If you cannot find the word, you have learned something.